The Closet of Hope at Bloomington Covenant Church

In 2006, Tony Anderson & Josh Hiben started a sandwich ministry. They took 25 sandwiches to folks living on the streets in downtown Mpls and would spend time praying with them.  After 2 years the boys went off to North Park University.  Our Youth Pastor, Erick Abramson decided to keep the sandwich ministry going and we went from 25 to 125 bag lunches.   We set up across the street from Harbor Lights Homeless Shelter.  We had a church garage sale and took the leftover clothing along with the sandwiches and got rid of every piece of clothing. Soon the lunches became secondary to the clothing.  In asking for donations we became inundated with clothing and decided we should open a free clothing store.   After much research we opened the Closet of Hope in March 2012.  What started out as 25 sandwiches in 2006 has evolved into serving over 23,000 folks in need.